Frequently Asked Questions

Here you can find answers to general questions concerning Ultimate Stunts. If
your question is not here, then you can ask it with the form on the bottom of
this page. Please only ask questions in english. Question and answer will be put
on the site in english first, and then translations will be made to other
languages. If you want your question+answer, this entire page, or the entire
Ultimate Stunts site to be available in your own language, please help me by
using the Contribute page.
(About the project)

Why did you start the project?

I like game programming

There were not enough good games for Linux

Stunts is the best racing game ever

It is a good way to learn things like openGL, physics simulation and
network programming

Is there a way to be notified by email of new releases?

Yes. You should create a user account for yourself on
Sourceforge. Then, go to the
project page of
Ultimate Stunts, and click on the white envelope next to the name of a
package that you want to monitor.

Is this project dead?

No, but it has been inactive for a long time. It will continue at a slow pace.

How can I help Ultimate Stunts?

That fully depends on your skills. If you speak both english and a non-english
language, then you can make and maintain translations of the website (and later
of the game). If you have artistic skills (e.g. in creating music, sound
effects, textures or 3D models), then you can help with that (please first
contact me so that you know what's needed and what's not). And, of course,
Ultimate Stunts needs programmers. Programmers with knowledge about openGL,
SDL, ODE, FMOD, openAL, network programming, multithreaded programming, physics
simulation or AI programming can make themselves useful.

Of course, if you have good ideas, then you can also help Ultimate Stunts by
posting them on the
open discussion forum.

Will there be an online site where we can upload our own tracks/tiles/cars?

For now, if you have contributions, then you can send them by e-mail. If the number of
contributions gets really large (which is expected when a reasonable track editor is
made), then there will probably be a site / page for exchanging your own creations.

why isn't this great game listed in ubuntu's repositories?

Because nobody listed it there. Do you know someone who can do that?

Do you know if the origninal source code of stunts from the nineties is available somewhere?

I read somewhere that the original Stunts sourcecode is lost.
Distinctive Software was taken over by Electronic Arts in 1991.
I read somewhere that after that, some of the Stunts developers (at least Kevin Pickell) started working
on Need for Speed.
(About compiling / platforms)

Which platforms are supported?

In theory, every UNIX-like platform is supported that has openGL, SDL and
BSD network sockets (you need either FMOD or OpenAL for sound, but you can compile
without sound support). Windows is supported through the Cygwin environment
(if you use the windows installer of Ultimate Stunts you don't need to install Cygwin).

Platforms for which Ultimate Stunts should compile out-of-the-box are:

x86-32 and x86-64 Linux (many distributions)

Cygwin 1 on windows

Platforms for which succesful builds have been reported are:

FreeBSD

PPC Linux

Platforms where there are known compilation attempts (with problems):

SPARC Solaris

Which versions of windows are supported?

The Ultimate Stunts installer for windows was created and tested with 32-bit windows XP.
It should work on windows 2000, windows XP and later windows versions, but due to
small changes between windows versions, non-XP windows versions can have some issues.

Users with windows Vista and windows 7 have reported some problems. These problems seem
to be mostly related to the fact that these windows versions have stricter security policies
than windows XP (e.g. they don't allow programs to write to their own installation directory,
which is what Ultimate Stunts does for highscores, saved tracks and replays).

Version 0.7.7 contains some changes that should improve support for windows vista and windows 7.
Ultimate Stunts was originally intended to improve the availability of computer games for Linux,
so my primary focus has always been on Linux. You windows users should be happy that windows
is currently better supported than Linux (it's a shame that there is no easy way to create
binary installers for Linux that are portable between different distributions).

Will there be out-of-the-box compile support for OS X?

I hope so. Unfortunately I do not have an OS X system, so I cannot develop OS X
support. It should be relatively easy to patch the configure.ac file so that OS X
is supported. You only need autoconf experience, and some compilation experience.
I don't think that anything needs to be changed in the source code itself.

Is it possible to run the windows binaries in Wine?

It is possible to run Ultimate Stunts in the windows emulator
Wine, even with hardware accelerated
graphics, but sound may not work. To prevent it from crashing, disable it
by using the "nosound" windowsdriver in ultimatestunts.conf. BTW, this is just
for fun; for Linux users it's better to compile the source code.

What sound output targets are supported?

Ultimate Stunts can use two libraries for its sound output:
FMOD and
openAL. The decision which of these is
used is made by the configure-script when compiling the source code. If
openAL is detected, it uses that, else if FMOD is detected, it uses that, and
else it compiles without sound support. Both libraries are multi-platform 3D
sound libraries, which use the platform-specific output targets of the operating
system they work on. For example, in windows, DirectSound can be used, and in
Linux OSS or Alsa.

Is there a way to compile Ultimate Stunts and have some libraries in a nonstandard location?

Maybe this works:

export LDFLAGS="-Lput_your_path_here"
./configure
make

How can I build this project using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005?

I don't know whether this is possible. Ultimate Stunts uses the BSD socket library for network
communication, which is available on almost all UNIX systems (Linux, OS X etc.), but not on
windows. On windows, the free UNIX emulation layer "Cygwin" is used. If you really need to use
microsoft's compiler, then you need to do a lot of hacking to make thinks work. You may
either need to remove the network code somehow, or rewrite it to winsock, or find a way to use
a library like cygwin1.dll together with visual studio. For the rest, you need to link with all
the right libraries (SDL, FMOD or OpenAL, OpenGL etc.)
(About using)

Where can I install the data files?

You can place the data files anywhere on your system, as long as the datadir
variable in ultimatestunts.conf points to it. By default, this is "." in the
windows binary distribution, and "/usr/share/ultimatestunts" in the source code
package. Note that currently the file ultimatestunts.conf itself needs to be in
the "." directory, so you should start Ultimate Stunts from the same directory
as where ultimatestunts.conf is.

How can I uninstall Ultimate Stunts?

Why do you want to uninstall a great game like Ultimate Stunts? :-P Now seriously:
it is simply a matter of removing the Ultimate Stunts game directory. If you
installed Ultimate Stunts in windows using the setup program, then you can also
uninstall Ultimate Stunts with the uninstall program.

What are the keys inside the game (e.g. for controlling the camera)?

Have a look here. These things can
and will change in future versions.

Is it possible to use tracks from the original Stunts in Ultimate Stunts?

Yes: you can import them with the import function in the track editor. You can NOT use them
directly by renaming .trk files to .track files. Please read the track editor documentation
on this website or in your Ultimate Stunts installation to find out more on how to import
.TRK files.

Where can I play online?

The online gaming function is available in the "game type" menu. It connects to
ultimatestunts.nl to find other people who are interested in online games.
However, due to a low number of visitors, this function is currently untested.
You can also connect to someones game server if you know his/her IP number.

How I can set fullscreen off?

In the graphics options, change from "fullscreen:widthxheight" to "window:widthxheight"
For instance, use "window:800x600". Currently, this might cause display problems in windows, so
you may try to do this manually in ultimatestunts.conf.
(About hardware)

What hardware is required for Ultimate Stunts?

To take advantage of all graphical features of Ultimate Stunts, I'd reccommend
the following:

A video card with hardware 3D acceleration for openGL, and 40MB or
more video memory. The popular NVIDIA Geforce and ATI Radeon cards have
openGL 3D acceleration.

1 GHz processor

20 MB free disk space, 40 MB free RAM

If you have less video memory, then performance might drop because textures
don't fit into video memory, so they need to be swapped to/from RAM. This can
be solved by decreasing the texture size in ultimatestunts.conf. If you set
everything to minimum in ultimatestunts.conf, then you only need the following
to make it work more or less smooth:

16 bit, 24 bit or 32 bit color depth support on your video card

600 MHz processor

20 MB free disk space, 5 MB free RAM

Slower processors will also work, but of course the graphics and simulation will
no longer be smooth enough. The theoretical limit (NOT recommended) is a 386 PC.
The slowest processor that Ultimate Stunts has been tested on is a pentium 75.
The windows version of Ultimate Stunts is compiled on an AMD Athlon processor.
It is not known if the executable is compatible with very old processors, but
it will probably not give problems with pentium-compatible processors.

I have a fast computer. Why is Ultimate Stunts still too slow?

The speed of Ultimate Stunts is mostly limited by openGL, so if you don't have
openGL acceleration, that will be your main problem. Some older video cards only
have acceleration for Direct3D, not for OpenGL. Most modern video cards have good
OpenGL acceleration, but you still need the correct OpenGL drivers to take advantage
of it. They are usually installed when installing the video card drivers, but maybe
it isn't done automatically in your case. Maybe you can run some kind of OpenGL test
program to see who is the OpenGL vendor.

If you can't get fast OpenGL, you can try to run
Ultimate Stunts in a very small window (or small resolution fullscreen),
to decrease the number of per-pixel operations of openGL. Another effective
way of improving the speed of Ultimate Stunts is disabling parts of the reflection
rendering in ultimatestunts.conf.

Have there been known issues with any video hardware?

In the past, there have been some issues, but they have been solved. Ultimate
Stunts is continuously being tested on an Intel i815, an
ATI Radeon 9200 and a NVIDIA Geforce 2. There could appear new issues when the
rendering engine is being improved, but currently there are no known issues.

Can I use a joystick or another gaming device?

Yes. Users of joystick-like devices have the advantage of proportional steering.
There are currently no plans for force feedback support (just because I don't
know how to do that). Game pads should work just like joysticks.
(About the future)

Will the tile creator be parts-style (gives parts that you can rotate,
move, scale, etc.) or 3D-editor style (you can import files from a 3D modeller
)?

It will be more like 3D-editor style. Actually, I don't have plans to make it
much better than it is now. The idea is that the tiles are the parts,
the track-editor will be a parts-style editor. The stunts3dedit program
will be nothing more than a user-unfriendly tool for importing foreign file
formats, and applying some low-level modifications. IMO only parts-style editors
are user-friendly enough for unexperienced users. The track-editor will be
suitable for these users, the stunts3dedit program will not.

Does the 1.0 version comes w/t an .sh installer?

In version 1.0 I'll try to make installation as easy as possible. I'll also make
packages for various distributions, and maybe even a live-CD for people who
don't have Linux installed :-)

Will future versions include or mimic the bizarre bugs/flaws in the physics
engine of the original Stunts game?

Many people have asked for this. It does not have a high priority, but
maybe some of them will be added in the future.
Some bugs have actually appeared in Ultimate Stunts without my intention (e.g the
big jump when hitting a bridge).
(about any other subject)

The physics are off. Is there a way to tweak the engine?

I often get complaints on how the cars handle in corners. Unfortunately I don't know yet how
to fix this. If you want to tweak car settings: you can do this in the .conf files in the cars
directory. If you want more, then become a programmer, get the source code of Ultimate Stunts
and improve the game engine in the source code.

What are you like?

I'm a 29 year old software engineer, living and working in Delft, the Netherlands.
I have a MSc degree in Applied Physics.
When there is time for it, I like to work on projects like Ultimate Stunts.
I have a lot of programming experience, especially with 3D graphics, which started
when I was only about 13 years old, when I learned programming in QBasic. Actually,
the first interactive program I ever made was a remake of Stunts in QBasic. After that
game (which was a "semi-3D" game), I made several simpler games, a 3D editor and
(still in QBasic) the space flight simulator "Star Voyage" (which was later
ported to Visual Basic). I worked for several years on that project
(1997 - 2001), and it was very realistic, but the gameplay was quite boring.
That's when I remembered Stunts, and started the Ultimate Stunts project.

Hello. This project is looking good... how many people are actively working
in this project? Just you?

I, CJP, am the only one who is currently doing the programming work. BBalazs has contributed a
significant part of the 3D models.

Can you use Blender 3D to import objects like tiles?

From Ultimate Stunts to Blender is difficult. You could write a Python plugin for Blender...
From Blender to Ultimate Stunts is easier. The ustunts3dedit program can import several file formats.

Recently posted questions:

Are there any plans to add more cars?
Yes, but adding a new car is a lot of work, so I won't add many cars in a single version.
hi, when i try to install the game i can extract and run ./configure but when i try make it gives "make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop." what is wrong?
The configure script is supposed to generate Makefiles. If they are not found, then I guess
the configure script failed somewhere. Please have a look at the output of the configure
script and read the documentation on how to compile Ultimate Stunts. If you can't figure it
out on your own, please contact me.
Issue with non-us keyboard layout (fr) via ibus. I can not enter any number because required modifier (shift, numlock) are not taken.
There is the possibility of car mod?
Could you add the indy 500 car from the original stunts? I feel like the Formula 1 car is similar, but accelerates much faster making ramps very easy.
In the next version, put some trucks, buses, tanks, will get much more shocking game I am Brazilian and I used google to translate
How to fix make error 1 and error 2 when compiling ?
I'm going to change my PC. Would Ultimatestunts be compatible with Windows 8.1?
To contribute and help out with Ubuntu, see community.ubuntu.com and wiki.ubuntu.com/ContributeToUbuntu
How can i translate the game?
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English only please. This is not a proper place for bug reports, it's just for
general questions that apply to more than just one specific situation.